The premature rupture of membrane before the beginning of parturition causes an efflux of amniotic fluid from the ruptured part, an onset of labour-pains accompanying the amniorrhea and an ascending intrauterine infection from the ruptured part, and before normal gestation (40 weeks). Thus an immature fetus is born and, both the mother and the fetus are exposed to a serious danger.
Treatment of this disease is roughly divided into (1) positive induction of labor and (2) watchful waiting. The former is based on the assertion that prompt derivery of a fetus followed by care in an incubator is better than exposure to a danger of microbiosis caused sooner or later, and the latter is a method by which extraction is carried out after as sufficient a maturation of a fetus as possible is awaited by intravaginal disinfection and administration of antibiotics and tocolytic agents to the mother body.
However, in the case of the former, the function of lungs (respiratory function) of the fetus is always immature before 35 weeks of gestation, and therefore, there is a risk of respiratory distress syndrome immediately after the birth, so that the life of the fetus is endangered. In the case of the latter, such an effect is found that a stress imposed on the fetus by rupture of membrane accelerates maturation of the function of lungs of the fetus, but the efflux of amniotic fluid cannot but be looked on, and there is always a danger of infection in the amniotic fluid. Recently, in order to prevent infection in amniotic fluid, reports have successively been made on attempts to prevent ascending infection from vagina to uterus by putting a contraceptive pessary on cervix uteri and always injecting thereinto an anticeptic solution. This method permits the prevention to some extent of the ascending infection after the attachment of the pessary, but is ineffective for a case in which an infection in the amniotic fluid has already been caused (usually, bacteria are detected in the amniotic fluid 2 hours after rupture of membrane) and is ineffective for preventing the amniotic fluid from efflux because no close adhesion can be attained between the cervix uteri and the pessary.
Intrauterine environment is an incubator more perfect and comfortable than any other artificial incubator for a fetus which is supplied with nutrients and oxygen by the mother body through placenta as a point of contact. If various complications accompanying the rupture of membrane can be prevented, there will be brought about an epock-making reformation of control of mother and fetus. Under these circumstances, this invention has been accomplished on the basis of the finding that premature rupture of membrane for which no suitable remedy has heretofore been conducted can be kept under positive control by attaching a cervical canal catheter earnestly devised in order to satisfy the above-mentioned clinical requirements, by hysterotrachelorrhaphy (surgical closure of the cervix) which is used for cervical incompetency.